Boston and New YorkBoston and NY

Lens of Impact: Artists in the Archive

Join Swissnex and the Parsons School of Art and Design History and Theory for a discussion on artistic research and working with primary source material alongside personal narrative and socio-political issues.

For this edition of Lens of Impact, we are joined by Mev Luna, a research-based artist and Assistant Professor at of Contemporary Art Practice and Theory at Parsons School of Design, and Ohan Breiding, a Swiss-American visual artist, filmmaker and Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Williams College to discuss recent projects emerging from their work in archives and unpacking the visual, material, and historical resonances from these sources. Together, they will share clips from their respective projects and reflect on their processes.

Luna’s Confined Terrain is an experimental autoethnographic documentary that examines the Texas prison system’s complex relationship with Mexican labor and the US agricultural industry through the lens of one individual: the artist’s late father. Weaving together oral history, dashcam footage, and archival materials from the Texas Department of Corrections with 3D simulations, medical imaging, and ASMR slime, the film attempts to both visualize and reckon with the enigmatic phenomenon of intergenerational trauma and incarceration’s impact on multiple generations.

Breiding’s Belly of a Glacier is an experimental film and photographic installation that braids an ancient ice archive with a community-initiated project that insulates the Rhône Glacier from rising temperatures with a queer, speculative glacier funeral. In 2019, Iceland constructed the first memorial to mark the death of its Okjökul glacier. Since then, funerals have been held around the world to mark the melting of glacier bodies. These ritualized practices of collective grief perform the intimate entanglement of human and environmental well-being, and amplify the current state of climate emergency.

Lens of Impact is a joint initiative between Parsons’ School of Art and Design History and Theory (ADHT) at The New School and Swissnex in Boston and New York, exploring the cross-cultural spaces of art and design discourse.

Agenda

  • 12:00pm – Doors open
  • 12:15pm – Welcome remarks
  • 12:25pm – Discussion and Q&A
  • 1:30pm – Networking
  • 2:00pm – End
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Event start time

  • New York

    12:00PM

Bios

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    Bio

    Ohan Breiding

    Assistant Professor, Williams College

    Ohan Breiding is a visual artist and filmmaker raised in a Swiss village and currently living between Brooklyn, NY and Williamstown, MA. Through drawing, photography, photographic and filmic archives, video and collaboration they employ a trans-feminist lens to the discussion of ecological care by amplifying landscapes as witness. They have presented their work at ICA LA, Photo LA, the Armory Center for the Arts, LAMAG, LAXART, Human Resources, Oakland Museum of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Haus N Athens, Sharjah Art Foundation, IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthaus Zürich, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Oceanside Museum (Getty PST), Arts and Letters and MASS MoCA. Ohan Breiding was a 2024 FIAR resident, a 2024 Triangle Artist Resident, a 2021 TBA (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) Academy Ocean Space Fellow, a 2019 Millay Colony Resident and a 2018 Shandaken: Storm King Resident. They are the recipient of the NYSCA Award, Hellman Award, Puffin Foundation Artist Grant, SIFF (Swiss International Film Festival) Award for The Rebel Body, a short film made with Shoghig Halajian and the participation of Silvia Federici (author of Caliban and the Witch), Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award and DAAD Award. Their practice has been written about in Art in America, Artforum, BOMB, e-flux, Frieze, Hyperallergic and Whitewall. Breiding is an Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Williams College.

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    Bio

    Mev Luna

    Assistant Professor, Parsons School of Design

    Mev Luna is a research-based artist whose practice spans performance, installation, video, new media, and text. Through an autoethnographic methodology, their work reappraises issues of institutional access, incarceration, and how images of marginalized groups are circulated and controlled. Luna’s time-based works have premiered at SFMOMA (San Francisco, CA), Artists’ Television Access (San Francisco, CA), The Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago, IL), and Kino Moviemento (Berlin, Germany). They’ve given talks at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, Bard College, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Luna was a 2020-2021 Queer | Art NYC Film Fellow; 2018 Art Matters Foundation Fellowship recipient; 2018-2019 BOLT resident at the Chicago Artist Coalition; 2017 SOMA Summer participant in Mexico City; and a 2015–2016 Research Fellow at the Shapiro Center for Research and Collaboration. Luna was a 2020-2021 Queer | Art NYC Film Fellow and a 2018 Art Matters Foundation Fellowship recipient. Luna is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Theory at Parsons School of Design, and were a Visiting Critic in the MFA Painting Department at Yale School of Art in the fall of 2024.

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